Chess in Sword & Planet Fiction, Part II: Dray Prescot and Gor
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Dray Prescot 20: A Sword for Kregen (DAW, August 1979) and Players of Gor
(DAW Books, March 1984). Covers by Richard Hescox and Ken Kelly
My second exposure to Sword & Planet chess came in one of my favorite Sword & Planet books, which I’ve mentioned in this series already a couple of times. This was A Sword for Kregen, by Alan Burt Akers (aka Ken Bulmer). In this book, Dray Prescot, our earthman hero, becomes a living Jikaida piece in a battle to the death.
Jikaida is war game similar to chess, although considerably more complicated. There are several different variations played across the world of Kregen. It’s usually played on a board of much more than 100 squares of either black and white or blue and yellow. There are typically 36 pieces to a side, arranged in three ranks. I never tried to play Jikaida, though the rules are available. Here’s a link to an online description of the game.
John Norman also introduced an S&P version of chess in his Gor series. He called it Kaissa, which is clearly a nod to the Goddess of chess — Caissa — who first appeared in a 1527 poem by Hieronymus Vida telling the story of a chess game between the Gods Apollo and Mercury.
Norman’s clearest description of the game came in book #20 of his series, called Players of Gor, although the complete rules aren’t included. Kaissa is played on a 100 square board alternating between red and yellow. Yellow moves first. There are two primary variants, either using 21 or 22 pieces to a side.
The game represents two warring cities trying to capture the other city’s “home stone,” which represents the soul of the city. Supposedly there’s a whole caste of “players” on Gor who dedicate their lives to Kaissa.
The Talera series by Charles Gramlich
Because Jetan, Jikaida and Kaissa captured my imagination so much, I had to introduce my own chess variant in the Talera series. There are two, simple and complex. They’re called Kyrel or Kyrellian. The playing board for Kyrel is a 100 squares of black and white. The two sides are called Crystal and Obsidian (or sometimes Jet). There are twenty pieces to a side.
In Kyrell, the simpler version, there are 2 players and each has a “homeland” consisting of twenty squares upon which his or her pieces start out. There is a bridge of 4 by 4 squares that connect the home field to the main board, called the war board. Pieces have to be moved across the bridge to begin the battle. On Talera, as on Earth, this game is often called the Game of Kings, and Kyr is a word meaning King in some Taleran languages.
In Kyrellian, the large version, the war board is 120 squares and there are 4 homelands so 4 players can play. In addition to Crystal and Obsidian, there are Argent and Vermillion. Each still has a 4 by 4 square bridge to move across to activate their players. Victory, in either version, comes when the opponent or opponents are captured or driven back fully onto their home board. In Kyrellian, alliances are possible and players can switch sides at any moment. Most Kyrellian games go on for many hours, usually with breaks, while Kyrell is more equivalent to a chess game in length.
Below are the pieces for Kyrel. However, although this game is mentioned several times in the Taleran series, I never produced a story revolving specifically around the game so I’ve never completely developed the rules. Not yet, anyway. So, you’re not going to find Kyrel and Kyrellian boards at your online stores for Christmas.
Crystal — Obsidian
Major pieces
Crystal prince, Obsidian Prince
Fire Rider, War Rider
Air Rider, Winged Rider
Earth Rider, Death Rider
Water Rider, Iron Rider
Minor pieces
The Owl, The Raven
Priest, Priest
The Wolf, The Beast
The Falconer, The Piper
The Sword, The Dagger
The Shield, The Stone
The Lance, The Thorn
The Angel, The Lady
Wind, Cloud
Mage, Sorceress
Lesser pieces
Slave, Slave
Trader/Merchant, Trader/Merchant
Singer, Singer
Child, Child
The Peasant, The Peasant
See Part One of Chess in Sword & Planet Fiction, discussing Edgar Rice Burroughs’s The Chessmen of Mars, here.
Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. His last article for Black Gate was Part I of his look at Chess in Sword & Planet Fiction, The Chessmen of Mars.
I first got introduced to Gorean chess in “Assasin of Gor”. Really neat scene with a game of it in there. Neat philosiphy, how the Assasin respected the Game player who was a blinded man but played brilliant games of chess. Talk about how various men had different passions in life they could devote themselves to and the Game was one of them.
They were both obviously influenced by Burroughs’s “Chessman of Mars” – but in the 1960s, 70s chess got popular with Bobby fischer. Pop culture had a lot of refs, such as the “Gamemaster” in Marvel Comics. Also early video games tackled chess including unvelievably the Atari 2600.
Assassin of Gor is one of the better stories in that series and I definitely enjoyed the chess references. I was quite fascinated with Bobby Fischer later as well and read his book on chess, as well as plenty of his games. I’m working on a story about Paul Morphy, who was an American who was considered one of the best chess players in the world well before they had the world chess championships
I chuckled at the “Players of Gor” cover. Apparently a common tactic of Kaissa is “distract your opponent with a scantily clad slave girl.” Didn’t get that far into the series, stopped after #3.
I stopped after Nomads, which I think is #4. I could tell that the Icky Quotient was poised to go through the roof.
I stopped after reading the first book, which was kind of okay but revealed the the final scene the direction the series would go. I knew this already of course — I read it probably around 2000 just to see. I remember a guy I knew in high school coming up to me and saying, hey, you like fantasy, right? I’ve got this great series you need to try — and he was talking about Gor.
I started reading these in the 70s and was reading them as they were published, so I had no post hoc knowledge of what was about to occur, and the slavery concept developed relatively slowly over the first 10 or so, although it eventually became almost the sole focus of the series
Nomads was my favorite. i did like a later one called Marauders pretty well. It had a Viking setting. I talked about the Norman books quite a bit late last year on the Swords & planet page
Marauders was one of my favorites! The Kelly Freas cover is the best but the alt cover with more energy is more apt. “How should a Man live…?”
What got me into Gor was the covers, seeing them as a tiny kid. I remember on “Rouges” with the topless lady chained by a pool as men in the background fight. It was in the K-Mart book pit (a square area with books, magazines…) next to the Deli most K-Marts. Some old lady that maybe worked there was grabbing them and with one of those fancy silver paint pens rubbing over that tiny bit of side boob.
“These books are horrible, young man! Do not buy or read them!” said the senior lady in a nice grandmotherly voice. So of course in a few years when I was going out on my own, buying books on my own I bought them… Sorry old lady… But the BUCKET-full of Gor books I got cheap like 25 cents each I sold back to the used stores at up to $300 each during college as the long blacklist of John Norman made people want them as much as the young me wanted those covers with sexy ladies in bondage… So I sold back my collection which helped with $ for final part of tuition and meals. Then I re-bought it digitally and physically at a sane price in a few years when the internet opened up self-publication again and Norman made new books also!
I know my set of Gor books with the DAW covers are worth quite a bit. Some day I’ll probably sell them, but not today. I also have his Time Slave and Ghost Dance, which was a Native American story.
I think that was about the last one I read. I really enjoyed some of the early ones but they got progressively more silly on the Slavery front. I guess I kept hoping for a return to earlier form. And I did like some of the general cultural stuff, like Kaissa. Norman drew a lot of parallels with Earth history for his different volumes
Funny – but you spare yourself the full horror but since its Halloween now….
In John Norman’s “Gor” world there are tons of slavegirls who are hot as the best Playboy Playmates and Penthouse Pets of the 1980s and are cheap and servile. This is due to the alien insectoid overlords aka the “Priest Kings” manipulation where they kept the world in mostly 0s tech (Ancient Rome) since it’s a good idea they don’t have tanks, guns or atomic bombs – but they allowed their chemical and medical tech to expand so few have diseases, especially —- you know — and most people look younger and are healthier through their lives.
So a buxom slave girl who’d look like again an 80s or 90s Penthouse Pet even without trowelled on makeup and silicone implants as decoration is nothing. They are pretty jaded on this and easy sex. Takes their dancers and elite slavegirls to get a casual rise out of almost any man.
This extreme knuckle dragging was a reaction to the “Feminism” of the 70s of course – good thing he didn’t start writing at the “Gender” forcing by big companies of today…
The earliest sex scenes in the Gor series were certainly titillating to young me, but eventually the scenes got so mechanical and drawn out that I actually found them boring. I’d skip over those scenes in hopes of getting to some fighting or plot development stuff
Thinking about chess or chesslike games in Fantasy makes me think of Joanna Russ’s “A Game of Vlet”, one of her Alyx stories. Really good stuff. Also, the novel Second Game, by Katharine MacLean and Charles V. De Vet. SF, not fantasy, but pretty enjoyable.
I believe I’ve read A Game of vlet, though I don’t remember much about it now.
I have a copy of the original Ace Double with MacLean and De Vet’s Cosmic Checkmate — I didn’t realize it had been later expanded into a full novel.
I love those old Ace doubles but I don’t have that one
It actually begain as a novelette in Astounding, called “Second Game” (1958), and was expanded twice — to “Cosmic Checkmate” (the 1962 Ace Double), and again to the 1981 novel Second Game. And De Vet wrote a sequel novelette, “Third Game”, that appeared in Analog in 1991. I discuss this and review the stories here: https://rrhorton.blogspot.com/2018/10/ace-double-reviews-14-cosmic-checkmate.html
On the whole, I think “Cosmic Checkmate” the best version (though the worst title!)
thumbs up
Enjoying this series. Are you going to also cover Lin Carter’s game of Darza, from his last Callisto novel, Renegade of Callisto? He also shows us a version using living players, and provides the rules in an appendix.
i haven’t written that one yet but it’s coming up, and i’ll also be mentioning some stories from a collection called Pawn to Infinity. Be a bit before I get there, though. Probably next week or so.